The Human Centipede II: Full Sequence (2011)- Tom Six

*Sigh*

I wouldn't say I liked the first film but it was strangely watchable mostly due to the lead performance of Dietar Laser and the fact I realised it really was failing as a horror film instead starting viewing it as a ridiculous comedic exercise in stupidity and a slightly barbed commentary on the state of modern horror films and audience expectations. So not great, not even good but not terrible either. So with the notoriety and surprising cult status of the first it was inevitable that a sequel would be released.

Well, we start with watching a fat, bespectacled and quite frankly weird looking security gaurd watching a DVDD of the first Human Centipede film a bit too intently. The reason for this is that, inspired by this film, he wants to create his own human centipede but bigger, with more people. And that's really all the plot to it. The film is attempting to be more a meta-commentary on both the reaction to the first film and the particular horror audience that lapped it up, wanting 'grosser, bigger, bloodier' in their horror films. Well, you got it, you sick fucks.

Unfortunately Six, the director, attempts this with all the subtlety and cleverness of a sledgehammer wielded by a baby crapping his diaper. First taking the film as a straight up horror film it's not scary, contains no interesting characters (at least the first film had Dieter Laser as a presence on screen, and the victims were semi-developed), and is worst of all boring. Laurence Harvey is little more than a collection of bug-eyed expressions and shuffling grotesqueness. The early scenes depicting the bleakness of his existence (living with his mother, in a dead end job, masturbating to the first film) are eye-roliing. Filmed in black and white, apparently an attempt by Six to make it more scarier, is a failure, mostly because there is no tension, the sparse dialogue means we are left to view what's happening on screen and it's shot in a student-film style obviousness that quickly invites tedium. It's infantile and simplistic story telling.

Now, on to the meta-commentary angle where we are supposed to take the protagonist as a 'horror watcher' type and his fascination with the first film but bigger, more obvious scatological elements and more blood and gore, well I see the point but I hardly need to see 91 minutes of it. There are some, on the surface shocking elements, such as a baby's head being squashed but unless Six's point is that inserting gross-out moments without context and a framework is rubbish, it just lost any impact and was at the end hilarious in it's ineptitude.

This is a film without any moral viewpoint, any redeeming elements in regards to technique and acting, that seemed to be the product of a director's vanity. The only shocks and horror come from the fact that a film as awful as this got made, and will be spawning another sequel. Truly Six must view his 'audience' as the true bottom at the end of his particular human centipede, as they eat his shit.

1/10